Take a few obsessed food bloggers plotting to make choucroute from scratch, add a beautiful day, a welcoming rooftop in Brooklyn, a cheap charcoal grill and a few beers and you’ve got the perfect.. err.. fire hazard!?.. but what a way to spend an afternoon! This little outing reminded me of my chicken wings grilling days on Paris rooftops, except that i didn’t get fined this time.

We like to throw little challenges at each other for fun and when Marc proposed to stink-up his apartment with a batch of fermenting cabbage we said, hey.. we’ll make the sausage from scratch! (it’s actually claire who said that.. my reaction was more like: Oh Chriiist!). Fast forward two weeks and here we are on this Williamsburg rooftop. I made the knackwursts a day earlier with the help of my butcher and while they dried under the sun before smoking Marc and Claire got down to business and produced something amazing for lunch. I’m talking about the best hot-dog that ever walked the earth .. wait.. hot-dogs don’t walk, do they?

Claire made the buns from scratch and marc brought a delicious green mango-maple relish. The hot-dogs came from La Cense and were grilled over hot coals. I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome this combination was… err..well, i guess i just did! The bun was delightfully chewy, not the dissolve-in your-mouth crap from your street corner cart, the relish provided a piquant bite that paired really well with the juicy dog. We added some sauerkraut and a few pickled ramps to the mix and ended up with hot-dog respect at its finest my friends. Brooklyn represents!

What you see is known in the professional jargon as the Happy knackwurst drying-bacteria developing stage. That’s when the sausage picks up that typical red tint from the paprika. I’m not a biologist but i think it happens when the bacteria is woken-up by the heat and start partying like its 1999, it creates a red cloud of bacterial joy. Did i already mentioned that i’m not a biologist? It’s day 5 after we ate our first bactewurst and nobody has died yet. If i stop twittering it means something bad happened. Keep your fingers crossed.

aah..ahhhh..hhhhhhh………………………………………

I’m not sure if it’s hallucinations from inhaling too much hickory smoke but i swear we could see the Statue of Liberty from the roof. Never noticed it before! Lady Liberty hasn’t shaved since that all economic crisis started, and she traded the torch for the bottle. Oh well, when times are bad…

Seriously, we have no idea who this person is. While we were smoking sausages and minding our own business, a group of French roof people joined us. They unloaded their grocery bags around us. They graciously offered some ice cold 1664 beer that we promptly accepted (duh!). They shared their food and we chatted for a while until they realized that they were at the wrong party. Next roof over!

You gotta love the French! A votre sante monsieur!

What’s *really* interesting on this picture is that No Recipes has No Laces too. What about that for a scoop? Much more interesting than the sausage smoking if you ask me. The problem is if i attempted to be that cool i would probably trip over and end up in the hospital, or in this case i would hang from a rooftop by a sausage link, but damn.. No laces IS cool! Yea.. that’s sausage smoking over hickory.. whatever.. but Converse without laces IS the shiznit!

The verdict? These knacks are awesome and totally worth the efforts. We got the recipe from Ruhlman’s Charcuterie and everything from the texture, the seasoning, the smokiness and even the knack sound as we bite into them is spot-on! Mission accomplished.

Later we got drunk and felt asleep on the roof. The grill caught fire. I started to cry like a little girl. We got rescued.

Okay, I was irrationally excited by the forbidden nature of the picture that I saved it! Well, they are my friends after all Sounds like a glorious afternoon, despite the gatecrashing and the fire O_o How nice too, that everyone contributed!

Sounds like the perfect rooftop cookout. Jealous because I can only grill on ground level. Oh yeah there is just something magical about regular budweiser with sausages that works wonderfully together.

http://www.gourmettraveller88.com Janet_Gourmettraveller88

Wow, envy for such great food event! I wanna try the sausages too, look awesome.

http://www.clumbsycookie.blogspot.com clumbsycookie

How would it sound if I said you have a nice sausage?! Probably tacky… But I’m so very disapointed with you! Homemade buns, sausages and no homemade ketchup?! I really wish brooklin was around the corner to be there as well!!!

http://www.norecipes.com Marc @ NoRecipes

Claire warned me about this post today, so I had to come see it for myself. I laughed so hard I sprayed a lovely Spanish Albarino onto my iMac. You have a future in comedy if you ever grow tired of cooking. On and I’m now renaming my blog NoLaces.

PS what’s with the photo of me looking like Quasimodo?

http://www.everydaycookin.com Darius T. Williams

Seee – somehow I need to be in NYC with you guys. Um, I’d love to be up there with you guys.

http://vanillakitchen.blogspot.com dawn

somehow I can never think of knackwurst without giggling after reading all that has happened. you always crack me up man!

http://www.weareneverfull.com we are never full

awesome post. i love the picture and gotta love those french. you guys knew how to spend an afternoon with awesome weather! only a 6 pack of bud? come on, guys.

http://quisimangiabene.blogspot.com/ Peter

Oh, man does that look like fun. I’ve made a bunch of things from the Charcuterie book, but no knackwurst yet. Might have to do something about that.